“Yes!” I replied vaguely, not knowing what I said. “An' there's th' big Tammany Chief you're fightin',” went on the officer; “he'd just about have my scalp, sure. I don't see why you did it! Your heart must be turnin' weak, when you take to carryin' a shave, an' stickin' people like pigs!”
“You don't think I killed him!” I exclaimed.
“Who else?” he asked.
The officer shrugged his shoulders and turned his hands palm upwards with a gesture of deprecation. To the question and the gesture I made no answer. It came to me that I must give my Sicilian time to escape. I could have wished his friendship had taken a less tropical form; still he had thrown that knife for me, and I would not name him until he had found his ship and was safe beyond the fingers of the law. Even now I think my course a proper one. The man innocent has ever that innocence to be his shield; he should be ready to suffer a little in favor of ones who own no such strong advantage.
It was nine of that evening's clock before Big Kennedy visited me in the Tombs. Young Morton came with him, clothed of evening dress and wearing white gloves. He twisted his mustache between his kid-gloved finger and thumb, meanwhile surveying the grimy interior—a fretwork of steel bars and freestone—with looks of ineffable objection. The warden was with them in his own high person when they came to my cell. That functionary was in a mood of sullen uncertainty; he could not make out a zone of safety for himself, when now Big Kennedy and the Tammany Chief were at daggers drawn. He feared he might go too far in pleasuring the former, and so bring upon him the dangerous resentment of his rival.
“We can't talk here, Dave,” said Big Kennedy, addressing the warden, after greeting me through the cell grate. “Bring him to your private office.”
“But, Mr. Kennedy,” remonstrated the warden, “I don't know about that. It's after lockin'-up hours now.”
“You don't know!” repeated Big Kennedy, the specter of a threat peeping from his gray eyes. “An' you're to hand me out a line of guff about lockin'-up hours, too! Come, come, Dave; it won't do to get chesty! The Chief an' I may be pals to-morrow. Or I may have him done for an' on th' run in a month. Where would you be then, Dave? No more words, I say: bring him to your private office.”
There was no gainsaying the masterful manner of Big Kennedy. The warden, weakened with years of fear of him and his power, grumblingly undid the bolts and led the way to his room.
“Deuced wretched quarters, I should say!” murmured young Morton, glancing for a moment inside the cell. “Not at all worth cutting a throat for.”